Page 36 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
“I’ll remind her.”
Gregory pulled open the front door, but with Hadesstill seated on Coll’s boot, it didn’t seem like any of them would be leaving the house. Blowing out her breath, Persephone crouched to gather the black cat up in her arms and set him in Gregory’s. “We’ll be back later, Hades,” she said, scratching between his ears.
The cat ignored her, his gaze on Coll, his chest rumbling with an uncharacteristic purr. Furrowing her brow, she took the Highlander’s arm and headed outside to the waiting barouche. The second the front door closed, she was certain she heard a muffled, masculine yelp; no doubt whatever spell Coll had cast had worn off, and Hades was back to himself again.
He handed her up and sat beside her on the front-facing seat, and Gavin clucked at the team of bays, sending them into the street. “It’s a lovely morning, lass. Are ye certain ye wish to spend it in that dark theater speaking lines from a dark tale?”
She gazed at him. “What did you do to my cat?”
Coll put a hand to his chest and lifted an eyebrow. “Yer cat is a fine beastie. We understand each other, I reckon.”
“Mm-hmm.” Bending down, she ran a finger along the side of his boot.
“Ye said I needed to get past ’em,” Coll went on. “Ye didnae say h—”
“I know. I didn’t say how you should or shouldn’t do it.” Lifting her finger to her nose, she sniffed. “Coll MacTaggert, why does your boot smell of fish?”
“I reckon that’s because I rubbed a fish on it.”
Persephone burst out laughing. Of all the ingenious, unexpected things in the world, this Highlander had managed in a day what some of her friends hadn’t accomplished in six years. “Well-done, then. I concede.”
“Then I’m to be allowed into the house?”
“You may come for dinner on Friday, if you wish. Flora is having her daughter, Beth, and Beth’s husband andbabies over, and no doubt Gregory will ask his brother to join us, as well.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good.” She met his green-eyed gaze, then shook herself before she could wrap her arms around his shoulders and kiss him in front of London. The man was seeking a wife, after all. “Did you attempt to speak to anyone in Hyde Park this morning?”
“Nae. I’ll go this afternoon.”
“You won’t find riders after noon,” she countered. “Only ladies in carriages, trying to be seen by as many of their fellows as possible.”
With an exaggerated shudder, he folded his arms over his chest. “Mayhap I should just don a blindfold and point at one of them.”
She grinned at his obvious disgust. “That might get you a wife, but the odds that she’s someone you could like—or love—would be horribly long, I’m afraid.”
“Are ye certain ye’re nae secretly a princess or someaught? That would do to please the family, and I reckon ye’d do for me as ye are.”
The laugh she forced out sounded fairly convincing, or so she hoped. “I’ve played a secret princess or two, and I’m presently rehearsing to play the queen of Scotland. I don’t come any nearer than that, I’m afraid.”
Nodding, he settled deeper into the seat. “Do your neighbors truly think ye a shopkeeper?”
“Well, I haven’t come out and lied about my profession, but I have hinted a few times that that’s why I change my appearance so often.”
“And nae a one of them has recognized ye? My sister says everyone kens who ye are. Even she wants to meet ye, if she can do it without her mother finding out.”
“Her mother is your mother as well, is she not?”
“Aye.” He frowned. “Damned interfering woman. If shemeant to leave us behind, she should have done so. What kind of lass walks away from her bairns and then makes an agreement that they have to do as she says seventeen years later?”
Was that what had happened? “She walked away from you?”
He shifted a little. “It’s a long time done, but aye. She and my da had had enough of each other, I reckon, and when her next bairn was a lass, she decided she couldnae raise the wee one in such a barbaric place as Scotland.”
“And she left you—her three sons—behind? I can’t imagine doing that.” To leave children behind… She could understand hating a life and needing to flee it, but her own babies? Lady Aldriss had either been unimaginably desperate, or completely heartless.
Coll made a dismissive sound. “It’s done. Now I’m left with the consequences of a thing I had no say over in the first place. But I’ll do it, because I dunnae wish to see Aldriss Park and those who rely on the MacTaggerts doomed to poverty. I’m still of half a mind to wed ye, though, just to see the look on Francesca’s face.”
